Pond5 Public Domain Content Disclaimer

Multilayered and Embedded Works

Please be aware that an audio or video recording of a performance of musical, choreographic, dramatic or literary work is considered to include two distinct works (and are thus are potentially covered by two distinct copyrights):

The underlying musical, choreographic, dramatic or literary work and

The recording of the performance of such underlying work.

So if the underlying work is considered to be in the public domain (e.g., a Mozart concerto), that does not necessarily mean the that the recording of the performance is in the public domain.

The converse may apply to a U.S. government recording of a copyrighted musical, choreographic, dramatic or literary work (e.g., a speech by public figure who is not a government official - although editorial use of the speech may often qualify as fair use.)

Likewise, there have been cases of films that were considered to be in the public domain but were pulled from the public domain because the film contains a musical soundtrack that was later discovered to not be in the public domain.

Background IP

Please also be aware that if the content contains or depicts any third party intellectual property, such as a background trademark, trade dress, picture, art work, background music or reading, etc., the owner of that intellectual property may have the right to claim that use of the content infringes the owner's intellectual property rights.

Depicted People

In addition, if the public domain content (in a U.S. government work, for example) contains or depicts the image, voice or other recognizable features of a person, because public domain content generally is not accompanied by model releases, that person may have the right to object to commercial exploitation the content as an violation of their privacy or publicity rights.

Editorial Content

For those reasons, any public domain content that contains or depicts any such third party intellectual property or the image, voice or other recognizable features of a person should be considered to be "{u}Editorial Content{/u}" - meaning it is generally available for editorial use only.

Differences in Laws or Different Countries

For obvious practical reasons, we have focused on public domain status under U.S. laws. However, sometimes a work that is considered to be in the public domain in the United States is not be considered to be in the public domain in another county.

Moral Rights

The creator of a work may have "moral rights" in a work even if the copyright has lapsed and the work is thus in the public domain. The concept of moral rights is widely recognized, but it differs in different counties; e.g., it is stronger in Germany and France where it originated and weaker in the U.S. But at its core, moral rights are the right of the creator to object to treatment of his/her work that he/she judges to be derogatory and to attribution.

Sources/No Endorsement

We have endeavored to show our source of Public Domain Content on our website as an aid for our customers. However, those sources do not endorse and have no responsibility relating to our representation of content obtained from them or your use of the same.

Pond5 Disclaimer

We have endeavored to mitigate the possible but, we believe, unlikely risk of use of our public domain content in our collections by limiting the sources we used for our public domain content to sources that we believe are reputable and to content that has been presented as public domain for enough time that we judged that any issue with the public domain status would have already been surfaced.

However, although we believe that all Content that we have designated as "Public Domain Content" is in fact in the public domain, we assume no responsibility, and you are solely responsible, for reviewing the Content Information and if necessary confirming that the Public Domain Content is in fact in the public domain in the United States and every other country where your project will be used, copied, distributed, transmitted, displayed or performed and obtaining any rights that are legally required with regard thereto. Please read the provisions of our Content License Agreement relating to Public Domain Content.